“I know who the girl is,” and he fell silent.
It struck me as strange, and frivolous, that he should want to create suspense.
“And how do you happen to know that?”
“She told me.”
I felt a singular wave of awkwardness. As if I were ashamed. It often happens to me that I cringe with embarrassment over things regarding others, not me. For instance, when I’m watching a bad movie, it occurs to me that the actors uttered those lines and I’m ashamed for them, telling myself deep inside: “No, please, no . . . don’t say that . . . don’t do it.” Or else when I hear a writer on TV commenting on current events and using the same emphatic style as politicians and journalists, or even worse. The same thing happened to me in the run-up to the revelation that Arbus was about to make.
“WOULD YOU LIKE AN ESPRESSO?” I asked, suddenly leaping to my feet. We had already had one when he arrived. “Gladly,” he replied, and gave me an up-from-under look. I had just made an excuse to get away for a moment. In the kitchen, I caught my breath. I focused on the espresso pot, I carefully filled the little basket with coffee grounds, slowly, taking care not to spill any, though in spite of my painstaking attention I put a couple of spoonfuls more outside than inside the basket, spreading a light carpet of finely ground coffee onto the counter. My hand was shaking a little. My gestures were imprecise. Let me assure you, dear reader, that I’m not dragging this out intentionally to create suspense: but I would like to bring you as close as I can to the way I arrived at it. I twisted together the top and bottom of the espresso pot and set it on the burner. In reality, I’d already come to it for some time, but I couldn’t formulate the exact phrasing, the complete sentence, as if I wanted to let Arbus have the right to say it to me, a perverse pleasure that he was clearly experiencing in hesitating, prolonging the pangs of that pleasure to the point of spasm. I was staring at the flame under the pot when I heard him behind me. He had joined me in the kitchen.
“I’ll keep you company while you wait.”
No, my friend, you’re not keeping me company. It’s that you don’t want to let go. I know what you want to tell me: that the young girl they used to lure Cassio Majuri into a trap and kill him was your sister, Leda. I know it: Perdìta is Leda Arbus. Leda, pale fire of my youth, moonbeam that imparts no warmth! An abused young girl pretending to want to abuse in her turn, that is, a form of abuse so refined that not even a Chinese or an Ottoman expert on torture or a Jesuit in a libertine novel could hope to come up with it. Abused in the mind, the place where the most unspeakable misdeeds are perpetrated. In a part of me, I had understood it from the very outset: hence my profound shame now, hence the long, silent afternoons I spent as a boy next to her rigid body, admiring her chest as it rose and fell with her respiration. Leda was the only point that could stitch together all the others in the constellation of her brother’s account. I imagined grabbing the espresso pot, which was by now half filled with coffee, and hurling it into my old classmate’s face. I imagined the boiling spray of liquid scarring the few places left free of acne, his screams of pain and astonishment. Maybe he expected to get some reaction out of me, because he knew that Leda and I had been an item, in other words, that there had been something between the two of us.
Your friend’s sister is an important chapter in your life, possibly more than the friendship itself.
“How much sugar do you want?” I asked him, turning around with the handle of the espresso pot pinched between two fingers, taking care not to burn my hand, and filling his demitasse.
“I take it bitter, thanks.”
WHEN WE RETURNED TO THE LIVING ROOM, and he had explained it all to me, I looked at him in relief and gratitude. The same colorful fragments of the kaleidoscope changed position, giving life to new figures. It was hard to believe that the shy pianist had passed through those ordeals. But the lives of girls are full of blank spaces, suspended moments during which, unbeknown to their parents, but also to their friends and classmates, they frequent “a rough crowd,” they get stoned out of their skulls, they bury in silence risky or demented behavior. Then, from one day to the next, if they’re lucky, that phase comes to an end and they go back to being who they were before. At least in appearance. Leda had been initiated in that way. I don’t know whether Angelo and his friends had raped her, and I didn’t ask her brother whether they had. The masquerade that ended Majuri’s life might just have been an isolated episode. It scared her enough to steer her away from them.
“I think my father must have found out about it,” said Arbus.
“And what did he do?”
“Nothing.”
Arbus was shaken by a wave of sarcastic laughter. His elderly father is still alive, spry, perfectly lucid, coldly realistic. One night, on one of those educational channels, while I was waiting for the half tablet of anxiety medication to do its dirty work on my consciousness, I watched one of his lectures on generative grammar. Not the whole thing, but at least half. As I progressively understood, I just as quickly forgot what I had learned. Well, no two ways about it, Professor Arbus really was a good teacher, I thought to myself, before the pill altered my perception of reality and my imagining of unreality, shoving them both away to a safe distance. A good professor, why not, a dedicated educator . . .
Too bad that he’d retired years ago.
“How about your mother?”
“My mother was kept in the dark. Understanding other people has never been her strong suit. When my folks broke up, she went back to school and got a degree in psychology on account of it.” Say what? She was working as psychologist because she was incapable of understanding other people? Or because she wanted to finally be able to understand them? Arbus hadn’t changed since we’d been students together: his statements could always be understood in at least two different ways, often two opposite ways, and he never retraced his steps.
“Where is Leda now? What is she doing?”
“She died three months ago.”
The grim matter-of-factness of that answer drained me of all energy. I told him how sorry I was.
“So am I. She had a tumor.”
“Where?”
“In the pancreas.”
I curse the very existence of this organ with its absurd name.
13
ACOUPLE OF YEARS AGO I received an e-mail, in fact, a series of e-mails in which an old classmate from SLM wanted to have a reunion of class 3A, and the invitation was kindly extended to me as well even though I had changed schools, not finishing my education there.
March 13, 2012
Ciao Edoardo
happy to hear from you (or at least to hear what you’re up to) . . . I’m “scraping together” all the old classmates . . .
I’m attaching the information I’ve managed to pull together so far, if you have any other contacts not mentioned in the e-mail . . . reach out to them and see if you can get their e-mail address and cell phone number . . .
when we’ve found them all . . . let’s see what we can do!!
Gigi Regazzoni
I never answered Regazzoni, except for his first e-mail. Why not? I couldn’t say. Aside from whatever desire I might have for an old home week, which in fact might be limited at best, I was writing this book, so it might have been useful to see all the old classmates I hadn’t encountered since then, find out what had become of them, ask a few quick questions about SLM, maybe, little by little, work around to also asking a little something about the CR/M, about what it had been like for them, how they remembered it, the relations they had had with the murderers, if indeed they had had any at all. Instead I just didn’t respond to the new e-mails. I avoided that which I ought to have been most curious about. Maybe it was precisely the fiction of this book that made me steer clear. So that I could feel I had a free hand.
New appeals poured in from Regazzoni, rather astonished that his idea had gathered so few adherents, a fairly lukewarm enthusiasm.
June 1, 2012
&
nbsp; Ciao, I’m still having trouble tracking down a few people. I’ve been working on it since December 2011 . . . and I have no intention of giving up.
Exert some pressure on the people who have yet to give me their contact information, maybe we can put something together . . .
It would be good if you could also contact the classmates whose e-mail address or cell phone number I have but who haven’t replied . . .
All those with whom I’ve had personal contact have said that they’re happy to see each other, with just one doubtful and another pessimistic about the atmosphere of the get-together . . . I can’t wait . . . but we are going to need a little bit of cooperation.
Let me know, talk soon, Gigi
6/24/2012
Ciao alumni!
Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum . . . mission (almost) accomplished . . .
Between Monday and today, I caught up with Barnetta, the most impossible to track down, I talked to him on the phone (and “shot the shit” just like in the old days).
Now I just need to lay my hands on the e-mail addresses of Giuramento, Sanson, and Zipoli (and I wonder if I could ask those who talk to them most often to do it), and the cell numbers of Busoni, Crasta, Izzo, Sdobba, and also Scarnicchi (does anyone know what became of Dormouse?)
My intention is to organize something for September!
For those who live outside Italy, for those who live outside Rome . . . and for those who are “out of their minds”: I’d really appreciate it if you’d start thinking about passing through Rome and, if you are thinking of it, informing yours truly (self-appointed organizer) as soon as you possibly can
To the people who live in Rome: can you put anybody up in your home?
I have an extra bed . . .
I can’t wait to hear the echoing war cry of the old class . . . and to shoot the shit again over a nice steaming bowl of carbonara . . .
Talk soon, Gigi
Battle cry? Reading this euphoric message, I was tempted to think: What are you talking about, Regazzoni, when have we ever shot the shit, you and I, in front of or not in front of a bowl of carbonara? I started to wonder whether this idea of his was going to go anywhere.
September 7, 2012
Ciao guys,
I’d like to try to set a date for the “pizza party”; I’d start by suggesting two days, pick one: Friday, September 25, or Saturday the 26th, so that those who don’t live in Rome can let me know what their chances (or interest) might be in getting together on one of those dates . . . or else they can suggest some other date . . . thanks, till next time, Gigi
September 19
Ciao everyone, not having yet received answers from:
(there followed a list of nineteen names in alphabetical order, starting inevitably with my own name, immediately after which came Arbus’s)
I’m going to cancel the effort to organize a get-together for September 25 or 26 . . .
let’s try again with a date in late October, and we can see if everyone is reading their e-mail
I’d suggest October 31, a Saturday
I’d appreciate replies, even if they are negative, and may God smile down on our venture . . .
(To those who have already replied, I’d recommend waiting for the others to reply . . . after all, I already know their position . . .)
See you soon (I hope) Gigi
But even these subsequent reminders did little to stir my ex-classmates: it was still just the same names, there were no new ones added to the list, in spite of the organizer’s best efforts. Regazzoni had split up the old class roll into four columns: Those Who Are Coming to the Dinner, Those Who Can’t Come, Those Who Haven’t Even Answered, Those We Can’t Track Down. The provisional roster said that eight were coming, seven couldn’t come, twelve hadn’t answered, and the rest couldn’t be found. I, in fact, belonged to the third category, a little contemptuous, a little depressed and concerned, a little supercilious, and a little bit ashamed at what an asshole I was being not to want to see my old classmates. All of them together, no! Two or three at a time, maybe, but all at once . . .! I thought of those whose last name was all I could remember, not even their first name, because it was strictly the surname that was used by the teachers, but also by the rest of us. That was how we were known. It was by the surname, and therefore in the class ledger, in the roll call, in the oral exams, and on the outside, in the number that we wore on our back while playing soccer, that a boy became recognizable. Well, sure, that’s the way school was: a destiny, a vocation, a list, a string of surnames, all different, while there were countless repetitions of the given names, the first names: so many Marcos, so many Fabios, so many Francescos . . . but just one Gedeone.
Regazzoni gave up any dreams of unanimity and decided to settle for a gathering of the most enthusiastic alumni. To build up numbers, he even tried to recruit old classmates from elementary school or middle school, with whom we’d studied even if only for a year. I followed his convivial efforts via e-mail, like the coward that I was, leaving the messages I continued to receive unanswered, like someone coldly observing the attempts of a cockroach lying overturned on its back to get back upright onto its legs: ready to weigh in but never doing so, waiting to see if it could do it on its own . . . a slightly disgraceful entomologist, in other words.
IN THE E-MAIL DATED OCTOBER 15, Gigi informed us that he had received twelve positive RSVPs (including his own), plus five “almost certain” and two “probably,” and then there were three who had yet to answer (including my name), and five certain no-shows. Among them there was one who worked in Zurich, Galeno De Matteis, and then there was the one who had fled to Costa Rica. I don’t think that Regazzoni had spoken to him in person, but maybe he had realized the unlikelihood of a fugitive from the law returning home for a class reunion dinner. The message ended with these words:
I wonder if anyone who lives near SLM could try to find a place for dinner, anyplace will do, someplace we can reach on foot, if possible, and where we could make reservations for twenty or so people . . . I’ll wait to hear from you . . .
The e-mail that came on October 19 contained a stunning new development.
Ciao everyone, I’ve managed to track down Arbus, who’s even reserved a flight to join us that day . . .
A dinner actually did take place, in a trattoria on Corso Trieste. Very few people took part. Arbus didn’t show up. He didn’t take any plane. And from where, after all? Here was Gigi’s commentary after the meal.
November 2
Ciao, everyone, I join in the preceding thank-yous for the lovely evening . . . I’m just a little disappointed because I was hoping to see more of you . . .
As for the rust and ruin . . . it seems to me we have nothing to complain about, I found everyone to be in excellent shape (and what the f***, we’re in our fifties, not in our damned eighties!)
I uploaded here: http://www.amilcarecenterforsafety.com/ (don’t pay any attention to the name, it’s a free site I happen to own, Amilcare was my grandfather) the photos I took and I’m waiting to receive the ones taken by Modiano and Kraus (send me 10 MB or so a day, zipped into a single file!!!)
I went to take a look at the photos on the site. Probably they had been taken by a waiter with Regazzoni’s cell phone. I counted six men around a table, in a restaurant that must have been dimly lit because the flash had gone off automatically, turning the diners into so many hallucinatory specters. If there hadn’t been a list of participants in Regazzoni’s e-mail, I would have had a hard time recognizing anyone. In the days that followed I continued to check the site, but apparently no one had added any other photos. Regazzoni’s e-mail went on:
As for my minor “disappointment,” I’ve decided that we can try again next year, on the second Sunday in April, during the day, at my house or Gedeone Barnetta’s place; he generously offered to have us over . . .
For all the assholes who didn’t bother to show up . . . you have another five months to make your plans, do your best to cle
ar your calendars for that date . . . Pilu said he’ll come with his 26-year-old “caregiver” . . .
Matteoli, if you’re reading this . . . let us know you’re still alive!!
(editor’s note: Matteoli, on the run from the law in Central America)
If, in the meantime, we manage to track down anyone else who graduated in 1975 . . . the more the merrier . . .
A hug to you all, Gigi
P.S. I was forgetting: for those of you who live in Rome and still do some sports . . . I have a little amateur volleyball team that plays on Mondays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. at Sant’Agnese and we’re looking for players . . . it isn’t obligatory to come twice a week . . . and anyway anyone who wanted to come try it out could make their minds up afterward.
On November 26 we got what even in Italian the insider jargon terms a “reminder.”
Hey, none of you sent me even one photo!
Crasta sent in two, but they were out of focus . . .
Let me remind you that the pictures I took can be seen at: http://www.amilcarecenterforsafety.com/
see you next time! G.
March 2, 2013
Ciao guys, I’d like to remind you all that during the dinner we had a few months ago now, we agreed that we would all get together again on the second Sunday in April, that is, 4/11/2013, at the home (presumably) of Barnetta in Casal Palocco. This time with our respective families, for those who wish to or can . . . so that those who have little kids have no more excuses not to come, because the wives will be there to take care of the young ones . . .
This time, again, I’m letting you know in plenty of time, hoping attendance will improve . . . get organized, I don’t want to hear any excuses!! If there’s anyone who just doesn’t want to see any old classmates, they can tell me to go fuck myself, but loud and clear!!!
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